I’m first going to start with a quick observation made by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZD-Net in which he states that:

“Ubuntu is nice, it’s solid, it’s fast and it’s robust (so far anyway), but it’s also way too geeky in spots. Don’t get me wrong, overall Ubuntu is nice, friendly and convivial. But there are dark corners that absolutely reek of Linux geekdom cliquiness that average users aren’t going to feel at home in (I don’t feel at home there). Ubuntu updates are one such area where you need a high level of know-how to understand what’s going on.

What the Ubuntu dev team need to do is find, I don’t know, 100 people who aren’t Linux geeks and stick them in front of the OS. Use these people to get feedback on different aspects of the OS. As soon as users start to look confused, scared or go bug-eyed then something needs tweaking. If your average home user is going to look at Ubuntu as an alternative to Windows or Mac, all these geeky corners have to be smoothed out. “ Full article here.

Well Adrian you bring up a very valid point. But when I have brought this up in the past, I was told that you would then have a Windows clone and Linux folks don’t want that to happen. The Linux zealots want to keep Linux as it is. They like it that way and don’t want anything changed. They have no interest in having Linux compete with Windows. They are more satisfied having their own little OS to play with and frown on us outsiders crowding their space.

With that said, this final release of Ubuntu/Kubuntu is a pleasure to use. I found no problem updating and installing new software. Yes it is not as user friendly as installing a app. in Windows but it works none the less. As I have previously stated, once Ubuntu/Kubuntu gets Click-N-Run from Linspire that headache will disappear.

So yesterday and today I installed the stuff that I normally use on a Linux system which included some 239 apps. and associated files totaling a whopping 139 MB of downloads. This part always make me nervous because in the past I have had some distros balk at the updates and would not start. I did this on purpose just to see how well it would work and it worked perfectly. Not even a hiccup or whine. Gotta love that.

So everything I use is up and running. My next big task is to see if I can connect to my Windows network and get my network printer a HP Laserjet working in Linux. I have had mixed results with this in the past. But what the heck its worth a try.

I don’t know what else to say. I still think this is one great distribution and Ubuntu should be extremely proud of themselves for what they have accomplished. Good job people.

Oh, almost forgot. For those who are new to Linux and the Ubuntu/Kubuntu releases you may wonder why there are two different ones. Ubuntu uses the Gnome GUI and Kubuntu uses the KDE GUI. Kind of an apples and oranges kind of thing. It just comes down to personal preference between the two GUI’s.

Comments welcome.

Tags: linux, ubuntu, kubuntu, feisty fawn, version 7.04